Hearthstone Tournament: The Pinnacle

The Pinnacle is hosted by Team Archon and is an eight player tournament featuring some of the most talented Hearthstone players in the scene. Six of the eight players were invited to the tournament, while two players had to fight for the chance to compete in a grueling thirty two player qualifier. The invited players of the tournament include Firebat, TidesofTime, RDU, DTwo, Hyped and Savjz.

Qualifiers

In order to have a chance to get into the qualifier you must have achieved top 16 legend in a previous Blizzard season or have received first or second place in a relevant Hearthstone tournament. The qualifiers were held on December 23 and were not streamed. All of the matches were a best out of five format. All participating players were to submit four decks before the tournament. There are no bans, however a player can override their opponents deck once if they did not wish to play against it. The top two players of the qualifiers advance to the main tournament.

Freshca who is known for his fatigue rogue as well as bringing innovative decks to many tournaments has not failed to do so again. Although Freshca lost to Theude in the early rounds of the qualifiers, he was able to pull of some impressive and fishy shenanigans as a mage. He promises to play this new mage deck on stream when he gets back from the holidays, so we’ll be able to see it in action.

Jab is a top legend player who consistently achieves the top ranks of legend with hunter and shaman. Jab also participated in the Blizzcon phase 2 qualifiers in New York City. He was able to beat Ignite in what appears to be a very close best out of 5, where he comes out ahead going 3-2. He then faces FrozenIce, who was a Blizzcon World Championship player, in round two and manages to get a 3-0. In the third round he plays against PurpleDrank who is a lesser known player, but consistently manages to do well in the legend ladder. Jab reaches the semi final where he faces his last opponent, Gaara of TempoStorm. Jab is able to 3-0 Gaara to claim his spots in The Pinnacle tournament.

Xixo represents ROOT Gaming and is known for consistently being the first legend of every season. More recently he was known to have claimed #1 legend on the North America, Europe and Asia servers simultaneously. Not only is he a ladder monster, but Xixo continuously makes it out of open bracket qualifiers, it is no surprise that he makes it out of this one as well.

Xixo takes down Ant in the first round going 3-1. In the second round he takes down Archon’s Hosty with another 3-1 score. Dignitas’ Greensheep manages to bring out all five matches, but loses to Xixo in the last making it a 3-2 score in the third round. ThijsNL is Xixo’s last opponent of the qualifier and also brings it down to the very last match. Fortunately for Xixo he beats him in the end and manages to continue his tradition of the Xixo Rule.

Main Event

The tournament format is a best out of five just like the qualifiers and each player brings four decks to the tournament. Before each match the players simultaneously announces the class they will be using. Each player is given a chance to eliminate the deck after knowing what they will be playing against, this is known as “the coup”. The coup’ed deck can’t be used for the rest of the series. You many only do this once per series of the tournament.

The group stages will be a double elimination format, while the playoffs will be single elimination.

The tournament will be streamed on Amaz’s twitch channel from December 26-28 every day at 12 PM EST. Tune in to see these players compete in a tournament with a $5,000 prize pool with first place receiving $2,500.